Chapter 23 #3
“Fucking brutal,” Dom mutters, locking eyes with me.
“Damn, D,” I echo Dom's sentiments.
Diego is minimizing all my pain and sadness to nothing. Making fun of me for being upset. It's a normal fucking feeling to grieve what we were starting.
With a ragged breath, he wipes his eyes and starts walking back toward his bike. The limp he always carries is more prominent. Before he gets there, he turns around and points at both of us.
“Hug it out or thug it out, but this shit ends tonight. Em needs us. His brothers. His family!”
With the end of his voice wavering with emotion, he picks up his helmet and straddles his bike. Starts the engine and rides away.
Leaving me here alone with my friend, who has every right to hate me. Dom doesn't attack me the second he can. Oddly enough, he shuffles backward and leans against his bike. Crosses his arms over his chest.
His eyes meet mine. Neither of us speaks. Too many unsaid accusations hang between us.
Men shoulder burdens.
Carry the heaviest things on our backs and in our minds.
Not sit around gossiping like women about our feelings.
Yet that's precisely what Diego left us here to do.
I stand there, spine rigid, still ready to defend myself.
Not all casually laid out like him. The silence stretches out.
Probably a full minute until finally, Dom breaks it.
“I fucking hate you for this.”
“Fair.”
It's the first thing that comes to mind.
“Fair,” he repeats, his eyes narrowing before looking out at the water. Boat horns sound in the distance. The water gently laps against the barrier. “That's all you have to say for yourself?”
“No, I never meant for this to happen.” My tone is steady despite the adrenaline storm raging inside me. “I didn't plan it, didn't expect it. It just . . . happened.”
Dom scoffs, his gaze snapping back to me with full fury again.
“Just happened? Give me a fucking break. You don't just trip and fall into her fucking bed!”
He already said something similar at the hospital. Makes me wonder if that's what he's hung up on. What's bothering him the most?
I shake my head, frowning at his cheapening us to just sex.
“That's not what I meant. I know it's no excuse, but there's something about her, Dom. Something that pulls me in.”
“Shut your fucking mouth right now.” He pushes off his bike, standing tall and back, ready to fight. My leg muscles lock into place, preparing for him to launch at me. “She's my fucking mother, Hollister.”
His voice breaks on the word 'mother.' Raw pain clouds his eyes. Betrayal and longing. An echo of the hurt he's been carrying.
“I know, Dom. And I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. Or her.” I run a hand through my hair, trying to ease some of the stress vibrating under my skin. “She's not just your mom, though. She's a person, with her own feelings, her own needs. And I saw that. I saw her.”
His teeth clench. His glare wants to end me.
“She doesn't have needs. Hasn't had needs since the old man divorced her. She's not all the shit you’re saying. She's not your . . . whatever the fuck you think she is to you.”
“Hopefully, my girlfriend.”
The fury brimming beneath the surface spews.
His face twists into darkness, launching himself.
His body collides with mine. My feet skid across the dock, shoulder slamming the side of my bike with a dull clang of metal on bone.
His forearm drives into my throat, trying to pin me there, but I twist, gaining the upper hand.
Fists swing.
Mine glances off his ribs.
His lands square on my cheekbone.
Pain cracks through my skull, but I don't go down. I grab his hoodie, yanking him forward. Our foreheads nearly smash. He slams me back again, but I pivot, lowering my center of gravity. Grappling, not striking.
“You're not fucking dating my mom,” he seethes between clenched teeth.
He's strong. Works out constantly. These things I know. But damn if his rage isn't making him ten times stronger.
We scrape and skid.
Neither of us gets a good grip until we crash against the old piling. The hard wood digging into my spine. A hard grunt leaves him as I knee his thigh. He counters with a hook to my ribs. Another to my stomach. I double over, breath gone, stars spinning in my vision.
He goes for my face again.
No finesse, just fury, but I catch his wrist.
Spin. Use my shoulder to throw him off balance. We both go down. Hit the dock with a thunderous thud. Wood groans beneath us. My knee hits something sharp. Doesn't matter.
He groans when my fist connects with his face.
Bone on bone, pain shoots from my knuckles through my hand.
We're rolling and wrestling. A tangle of limbs and punches.
Blindly hitting wherever we can. My elbow hits his jaw.
He snarls, struggles to flip us over, but I hold him down.
Leveraging my heavier weight against his feral fighting.
With a guttural cry, I surge forward.
Pin him.
One knee in the center of his chest, both his wrists locked under my palms. My chest heaves above his. We're panting and bleeding, spitting rage and pain at each other.
“Get the fuck off me!”
He twists and squirms. His chest rises hard against my weight.
He bucks once. Twice. Still trying to throw me off, but I don’t budge.
I don't yell. I just breathe. Let his roars sound between our snarls and heaves.
Let him feel it. Feel how powerless he is in the situation.
This is between Babs and me. Not him. As much as that pains me to realize now, it's true.
“GET OFF!”
My cheek hurts like a bitch. My black eye is swelling again. His lip is split. His eye is red and rising. His wrists twitch under mine. And for a second, just one, I swear I see it.
The kid.
Not the man.
Not the genius.
Not the grudge.
The guy who cut ties with his father. Now, struggling to keep ties with the only other parent he has left. Even if he treats her like shit and talks horribly to her. The one family member who still can tolerate him around. His father is gone. Sister fled. He's hard to like. Harder to love.
Yet, here he is defending his first love.
And her second love.
My grip tightens. His chest caves on a breath. Not surrender, just grief and sadness. He stops fighting. Stops moving. Locks eyes with me.
“I just don't get it. She's my fucking mom.”
There is a plea in his words. A plea for everything to be different. With her. With me. With all of this. I remember a promise I made to somehow bring them two closer. Even if we are miles apart from each other, together it could be great. Healing.
“I know. And I know I can't take back what happened. But I need you to understand, I never set out to hurt you. I never wanted any of this.”
I shift, letting one of his wrists go. My knee at his chest moves to the dock, bracing myself.
His arm doesn't move. Doesn't haul off and hit me.
He stares up, throat working. Jaw flexing.
The fire inside him dims a little. Enough to keep me from swinging again.
Enough to make him stop trying to throw me off.
“Why her, Hollister? Of all the fucking women in the world?”
Decades of pain and hurt etch across every single line in his face. His big brain is trying to work this out. But we're not labs and experiments that make sense. People are unpredictable. We like who we like.
“You think I don't ask myself that every day?” I run a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my neck as I try to find the words to explain something I barely understand myself.
“She's not just some woman, Dom. She's strong, she's smart, and she's damaged. And yeah, maybe that's part of it. Maybe I saw something in her that needed fixing, or maybe I saw something in her that I needed. I don't know.”
Dom's expression shifts slightly. A flicker of curiosity breaks through the anger.
“Did you just call my mom fucking damaged?”
I noticed the switch from mother to mom. Perhaps I'm making progress with this brutal honesty.
“She's been through a lot, as you know. Your dad, the divorce. Trying to be perfect at every dinner party, ladies’ luncheon, and charity event. The long stares, the quiet whispers, the gossip mill. She's had to endure that all alone.”
“Fuck those society bitches.”
He huffs as if they don't matter. To him and me, they don't, but that's her whole world. By undercutting their importance to her, he shows he doesn't get her at all.
“I agree, but it's the world she's in. It's all she has left. Your sister split town. She has no one to walk into those events except herself. Think of how hard that has to be.”
He uses his thumb to wipe the blood from his lip, not even wincing in pain. Must be a high tolerance for shit like this.
“I'm fucking there. I go to almost all those goddamn events.”
“For ten minutes, fifteen if you're made to do a picture.” I stare at him when making this point.
“She walks in to everyone staring. Has to ignore the sympathetic looks she gets when your piece of work dad, shows up.
She basically has to wear armor everywhere she goes.
You don't stay for hours on end to protect her from that.
She's learned to protect herself to survive all that. She deserves to be happy.”
Dom's expression darkens, and I can see the storm brewing in his eyes.
“And you think you can make her happy? You're just a kid, Hollister. You don't know what she needs.”
I hold my ground, meeting his gaze steadily.
“I know that she deserves someone who sees her for who she is. Who knows that world and can navigate it with her. And yeah, maybe I am younger, but that doesn't mean I can't be that person for her.”
He goes silent.
We sit here, side by side in the dark. Both of us torn and cut up, with our legs stretched in front of us.
“Why not someone else? Anyone else?”
The plea is still there. Not as strong, but with a little more understanding.
“I don't know, man. I don't know.”
My fingertips trail the outer bone of my cheek, searching for a cut and finding one. I pull my hand away, see the blood, and wipe it on the concrete next to me.
“It's fucking weird,” he grumbles, the calmest version of himself since I got here tonight. “My mom and friend.”
I don't respond. I don't need to. I've said everything I know to say. Explained everything I know about her without violating her privacy or what we shared as a couple. We sit in silence by the dock. Rage and adrenaline are cooling.
Not forgiveness and not a definite path forward. An understanding, kind of. A crack in Dom's armor.
“Em's dick really won't work anymore?”
“Fuck if I know. I could study it in the lab, but figuring out if my buddy’s dick works or not is not my first priority.”
I chuckle at the sarcastic dark energy that’s typical Dom.
The release feels good to my body, my psyche, and the direction I think we're going.
Dom gives me a steely side glance. Probably for breaking the silence or asking a stupid question.
But if anyone would know about bodies and how they function, it would be him.
“Knowing that guy, he'd probably love you studying his dick.”
A vision of Em shoving his dick in Dom's face comes to mind. Em's always running around naked at parties. If his shit doesn't work, he'll be devastated. Who wouldn't?
He shoves me hard.
My palm scrapes the broken concrete, trying not to fall over.
“Fuck you, Hollister.”